


homeostasis

by JadeClover



Series: star-hewn colossi [24]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Illness and Injury, Nightmares, Recovery, Things Unsaid, Zarkon's New Armor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 01:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13823364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeClover/pseuds/JadeClover
Summary: homeostasis(n.) — the natural tendancy of a system or organism toward a state of internal equilibrium in which its processes regulate the whole, maintaining stability against changes that would disrupt its optimal functioning.Zarkon wakes to an empire near-sundered, to secrets Haggar refuses speak of, and to a body that will not respond... but this state is only temporary.





	homeostasis

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this with no sleep in the hours after season 4 released, and only now do I finally manage to get it done. I had to throw in the towel on the extensive editing on this one, because having it done before season 5 is more important to me than every word sounding just right. I'm sure it's still good enough, I'm just a perfectionist.
> 
> Anyway, as a note, if you're not interested in reading about claustrophobia or unpleasant levels of sensory deprivation, you might want to be careful with this one. It becomes A Thing about halfway through.

He speaks to her—he is _almost_ certain, but hovering between oblivion and awareness, how can he be...?  
  
No—he _is._ After millennia, her presence is as familiar as his own, and the voice that weaves through the fog is _hers_ and hers alone, not the one still whispering in his dreams. His throat burns raw as his own voice scrapes out replies, but the words slip into darkness before he can recognize them.  
  
Yet it is _her._  
  
Time falls away, drained in an instant; he sleeps and wakes in turns until he forgets which comes first. He dreams, then the dreams become real, and in the midst of them, he loses and finds himself, time and again.  
  
...And she says, _Sire,_ and he wakes, because he was not sleeping at all. His bones ache, his chest resisting every effort to draw breath...  
  
And he is tired. So very tired.  
  
There he lies, listless, in a daze, yet when he claws himself enough strength and lucidity to listen, she explains: He was injured in battle. He would not wake. She kept him alive—( _"I did what could be done," she says, but her voice is fire, as though while he lie insensate, she silenced death itself, burned the whole world in sacrifice to keep him alive, just like the legends of old—those ancient, timeworn tales only he remembers_ ).  
  
( _"You died," she admits. "For four ticks... your heart did not beat." Beneath her voice threads an ache too terrible to bear, one that should not have been. If he could rise, if he could only keep his eyes open, he would reach out to her,_ do something, _discover how to erase the past, but the world slips away... When he wakes again, she is gone._ )  
  
The cold, metal bed he lies upon is all that maintains him; to move him from this place would be his death. Beneath his back, stacks of machinery churn and vibrate, giving life to long, glowing conduits fixed to ports at his chest, those tubes in turn what grant _him_ life, but behind Haggar's eyes, the balance of it wavers; the steel in her gaze is proof enough that he lies on an edge.  
  
Forming behind his lips are questions of the truth of his state—( _is this fear run rampant or does death already lie in his bones?_ )—but another look into her eyes and the words turn themselves to ghosts.  
  
She says, _Recovery,_ because she fought death to a standstill to win him a future, and her drive to ensure he keeps it overpowers all else, a hunger in her eyes so familiar it soothes him. Yet then come moments when she looks away, when she looks at him, and a different worry stirs behind her gaze, one he has no name for, but it steals the words from his mouth with its strength just the same.  
  
What is it?  
  
She speaks little of any matter beyond his health, and even when he asks— _"Are you well?"_ —her answer is a lie because she wants it to be the truth. _"Yes"_ is a diversion, but the question was only ever an offer. Her secrets are hers alone until she sees fit to share them, and one day she will tell him what has her too off-balance to hide it, silent in a way that is frustratingly familiar ( _but rarely has he ever seen her_ pretend _so desperately_ )...  
  
If it is danger that haunts her, she would have told him the moment he woke. Whatever else she keeps silent, it will be revealed in time. She will tell him—she always does.  
  
He trusts her. In all of this, he trusts her.  
  
( _Yet the look on her face hangs frozen in his thoughts, clearer than the dreams, and perhaps he would have asked her about it... if he could only keep his eyes open..._ )  


* * *

  
  
Slender fingers trace over his brow, over and again, the rhythm almost enough to lull him back into dark, comforting oblivion— _almost._ Through sheer force of will, he slits his eyes open, shadows and glowing conduits swimming above him. Twin, golden lights gleam; they blink, and it is her again. The thought of moving is an ache in itself, nigh _impossible,_ but if he can tilt his head just enough to lean into her touch, he will do it, too tired, too _worn_ to worry if need has turned him _needy._  
  
Her fingertips glide over the place where skin meets plating, the sensation seeping into him, warm enough to melt, though the touch's other half is lost to hardened keratin scarcely capable of feeling the pressure. A deep, slow rumble echoes in his chest, and his eyes slip closed again.  
  
Her fingers still, start to pull away, but when his gaze seeks hers, the touch returns, the motions hypnotic and repetitive.  
  
"How is the pain?" she murmurs, so soft he strains to catch it.  
  
To her credit, as a scientist-turned-magician-turned-physician, and to _theirs,_ to more than ten thousand years of a partnership, the question is not, _How do you feel?_ because she knows already— _stars,_ does she know—but words vanish when he tries to describe how that simple detail quells some restless energy in his bones.  
  
At the very mention, though, the waves wash over him, hot and stabbing and sharp, and his eyes fall closed again, the rumble catching jagged in his throat.  
  
That is answer enough.  
  
He seeks her gaze, blinking slow, and tries to ask it with his eyes because he cannot make his mouth shape the words.  
  
A small nod, her hair falling around her face. She understands.  
  
The hand at his brow hitches, just for a tick, her fingers curling in a manner that speaks of _restraint._ She cannot heal him with her magic, nor relieve his pain—one of the first of a thousand new details she explained to him in recent quintants. ( _And how many quintants has it been? Times slips away too often._ ) Any excess quintessence introduced into his system, even a fraction, would upset the delicate balance she fought to stabilize. The effects of his... _"injury,"_ if that is the word, are like a fuse blown out with too much current, yet the system adapted and it can no longer function without that same influx of power. The balance is ever-shifting, and outside changes must be meticulously plotted through formulas she devised, methods the conduits fixed to his chest are made to understand and adapt to automatically.  
  
Her hand breaks from its rhythm to trail down the side of his face, fingertips tracing the scar nearly as old as her memory and ghosting along the line of his jaw. _I am sorry,_ she says with it, _that I cannot do more._  
  
A sound rolls and rattles like it is trapped beneath his ribs, and with a slow blink, he manages to say less than what he means to, but he believes the core of the message finds her: He cannot blame her for not finding a way to best nature itself. It is not by her doing, nor her _not_ doing, that he suffers.  
  
He does not blame her.  
  
He only wants...  
  
( _Something._ )  
  
Her hand returns to his brow, the touch finding its way beneath his skin and working out aches and coiled tension. The breath from before manages to escape his lungs, shuddering out, echoing and fading into silence. His eyes close in a blink so long he might as well have fallen back asleep, and when they open again, they find hers. Like she says everything in their languages without words, her own eyes shutter in response, the glow brightening in increments as they slowly pull open again.  
  
Her fingertips glide over skin and plating once more, and he breathes easier than he has in a long while.  
  
( _And he wants..._ something.)  
  
One more blink, and this time exhaustion does pull him under.  


* * *

  
  
Like a specter of all that has gone wrong in the universe, his need to retake the throne hangs over them. She knows it as well as he, for she was the one who watched over it those many phoebs while he lay inert.  
  
"Watched over it, yes." Her eyes narrow to discontented slits. "But it was not I who was charged with the care of it."  
  
Nor was it she who failed in that, yet her decision brought that failure all the same. But for all the weight of an empire in turmoil hangs over him, he will not speak of it. Not now—not with his body too weak to even lift his head from the table.  
  
( _He can hardly turn to face her, can scarcely manage more than the shift of a finger. It is only temporary, she assures him. He reads her expressions and her movements, and something still lies beyond the realm of what it should be, but this, at least, is the bare, honest truth._ )  
  
On the state of the Empire, she says little, but there are times when she says _everything._ Once, simply, vaguely: "Matters are being tended to as best they can be." But another time: "The Empire is in ruins, lord. Lotor was a mistake."  
  
Does she mean their child's ill-fated rule or his very existence in general? A part of him protests, but another part recalls too many decaphoebs of bitterness, the memories far too strong and vivid.  
  
He does not ask which she means.  
  
He rests. He dreams, for all he would rather not. The nightmares come—he knows they do—though he can never recall them when he wakes. Gold, his mind suggests. _Familiar._ Or instead, it is crackling, searing violet. _Not_ familiar, _too_ familiar, all at once. It is _dark,_ for all that it is light.  
  
He refuses to let it infect his waking moments. Instead, he closes his eyes and tries to forget how each breath feels like it will never come.  
  
_"This state is only temporary,"_ she whispered once, deep in the shadows of the night. Her hand was light and warm upon his brow, but the rigid curl of her shoulders, the set of her mouth—did she not speak the truth?  
  
No—he knows her too well, for all a dozen tiny changes have moved in over missing phoebs, and that was something else—the old ghost that haunts her in the spare moments when she gives herself leave to think. ( _What is it?_ ) But is it any surprise? His absence ( _his hubris_ ) wrought a terrible weight for her to bear, left more worries on her shoulders than even her masterful walls can hide.  
  
He wants to somehow erase the past, wants it like he has wanted little else before, but it is no matter. He will soon return to his rightful place.  
  
Haggar does not lie to him. _This state is only temporary._  


* * *

  
  
"Come nearer."  
  
Her eyes glow like golden embers in the dark, so wrought and strange that the breath vanishes from his lungs. Her hands curled, brows drawn, she does as he bids, stepping forward until her knees brush the side of the table.  
  
An eternity passes, all in an instant, as eternities are.  
  
With a blink, the familiar crease between her brows softens. Her gaze falls to the array of connection points at his chest, and he might call it a _nervous habit_ if he was but a fraction of a degree braver, but no matter now many times she checks it, the conduits are still secure. He is alive.  
  
A small shroud of satisfaction settles over her, her shoulders loosening even as her hands curl tighter, and her eyes raise to his. A long pause, a tilt of her head, and slowly, she lifts herself onto the table to perch at his side.  
  
Such a rare vantage—she looking down upon him for a change. What would he not give for it to be as before, a familiar bed beneath him and not this unforgiving metal slab? How many galaxies would he trade if he could only see the stars glittering from beyond his own viewport?  
  
It cannot be—( _not yet_ )—but the mere sight of her works its way into his bones regardless. The breath in his chest deepens, and a warmth he cannot truly feel prickles through his limbs. ( _The cold never leaves him now, but he can learn to forget it._ )  
  
Once, he could never have imagined an exhaustion like this, but now it is an old, haunting friend. Sleep can do nothing for this.  
  
"Speak," he asks. It is only a whisper, but: _"Please."_  
  
Her brows knit together, barely visible in the shadows beneath her hood, and she nods.  
  
Light and untethered, her words begin as though she is not quite certain of how to say them, a voice to fill the silence shaped by little but bare wisps of thought. As she speaks, though, her surety grows, precise and directed, and the guise of a casual conversation falls neatly around them. ( _Just like before... but not._ )  
  
Her fingers pick at a stray edge of her robes, and as though natural, she settles onto a singular topic—a description of his body's myriad failures.  
  
Morbid. But practical at its heart—and would he have expected any less had he been able to _think?_  
  
Would he have wanted anything different from her?  
  
( _He wants_ her.)  
  
Her eyes are fixed on the darkness, no longer seeking his, even as her litany of diagnosis and prognosis fills the silence, even as her claws wear threads in her robes to fraying. Her voice, steady and unyielding, lays out first the effects and then their cause—"quintessence overdose," nominally, but will she not explain the rest?  
  
Does she mean to _spare_ him?  
  
She may speak of quintessence and cells and organs, but silence and regret whisper the rest in his ears. _Look deeper._ It was hubris. Hubris and compulsion and pride. He drove himself to this ruin.  
  
She still will not speak of it.  
  
He finds his own voice, and with words and allusions, he tempts her toward that bitter truth. She cannot miss it. He knows her. She _cannot—_  
  
"We must discuss the path of your recovery, sire." The look in her eyes is too _much,_ too _wrong,_ but through his silence, she moves forward just as she always has, like the past has no hold on her when the future awaits, and with no words for him to interrupt with, she speaks of nothing but what is to come.  
  
Each sentence from her is a neat bundle of promises and processes, descriptions of her plans and ( _what he suspects are_ ) mere reminders to herself of work to be done. How fully she throws herself into her projects these recent quintants, and his own health is chief among them. She is no soldier, he does not expect her to drill herself to exhaustion, but she works herself too hard just the same... and in that, too, the blame lies with him. ( _Hubris. How familiar. He went too far._ )  
  
The sound of her voice settles his pulse and quiets the thoughts straining for recognition... and yet a careful, quiet gnawing stirs in the depths of his mind, waking and rattling old fears from the dark of night. By her nature, her methods are so thorough, so exact, her entire being unwilling to compromise truth for the sake of sentiment or ease, and she has proven herself unable to leave any option unweighed, her own meticulous pragmatism resisting everything but reality in its unbiased whole...  
  
But in a cold, prickling rush, he sees it now—the missing piece: For all she speaks with frankness of the _difficulty_ in it, not once does she stray near the _entirely logical_ possibility that he may _never_ recover.  


* * *

  
  
( _When he wakes, she hovers at his bedside as before, but there the similarities end. The chamber is shadowed now, a concession to the night cycle, and she is but a silhouette in the dark. Her eyes glow too dim for anything but hiding the weight of secrets behind them, and she does not speak, nor draw closer._  
  
_He cannot bear it._  
  
_This, of all he has endured, of all these quintants have tried him with, shatters his ability to withstand it in a single, jagged break. He cannot bear it—he must_ move, _he must_ rise, _if only to look upon her more clearly and see what put that tired, worn,_ (almost lost) _look in her eyes._  
  
What has gone wrong?  
  
What do you need?  
  
_He would give her the universe if only she would take it._  
  
_Breath ragged enough to hear, he falls back against a table he never left, muscles gone limp and unresponsive as he stole what little strength they possessed for a movement he could not complete. Did she know he tried? Or was it so futile her own practiced eyes thought he merely lay in pain?_  
  
_A tilt of his head—all he can manage—and he finds her gaze again, something so strangely_ wrought _still in its depths. Her eyes' light, dimmed almost to nothing, steals the words from his mouth and sets a weight on his chest far heavier than the half-dozen quintessence conduits. In their light, he cannot speak. Nothing he says can face this._  
  
(He still has not learned what it _is._ )  
  
_"Sleep, sire," she says._  
  
_An abyss haunts him when he blinks, a darkness of the mind too eager to draw him in, and he refuses to accept oblivion, but what else can he do? Once, he could stay awake for movements, but now..._  
  
_Now, even at a mere suggestion, he can only let sleep come._ )  


* * *

  
  
She offers the idea in the quiet of evening, a familiar shape at the side of his bed. Holograms light the darkness with a violet glow, and she guides them through the air with shifts of her fingers. Diagrams and notes array themselves in facets of light and present to him the image of something physical. The details solidify through a halo of brightness:  
  
Armor—a suit of it encasing the body like a shell, no skin left to open air. She speaks, and terms long made familiar fall from her lips: Quintessence circuitry, to provide its function; regulatory aids, which the device is designed to supply. Her descriptions leave no room for question—it is a _device,_ not the armor it first appeared. "It mimics the appearance and function," Haggar explains, "but its true purpose is far more _delicate._ "  
  
How, then, will a useless, fragile shell protect him in a fight?  
  
"I do not advise picking fights, lord." Her eyes are slitted to brightened gold. "Your recovery must be allowed to progress."  
  
Does she think him so foolish as to sabotage his own health? ( _But_ that _is a fool's question—for what else had he done but break himself so thoroughly, so completely, that his closest friend must bend herself over designs for mechanics, unable to heal him from the magic of her own hands?_ )  
  
That bitter thought stays locked behind set lips, and the harshness of her gaze slips away, drifting to a more benign target, tracing over the ridges and bevels of the table he lies upon. "The design is in its early forms," she says. "It will have far more protective capacity when complete. It will be _functional._ "  
  
That is... _well,_ then.  
  
Is it not?  
  
His ears unpin, a pressure lifting from his skull, muscles uncoiling that had done so without his knowing. A quiet breath vibrates in his throat.  
  
The glow of her eyes is dimmer now, a mere gentle light. Voice low, hands still, she steps into her cloud of holograms, the cluster parting around her. She finds a new one and drags it to the fore. "These are the processes through which the suit maintains quintessence homeostasis."  
  
Must he truly understand its inner workings? But his ears shift regardless, angling to catch hold of her words, and some part of him wants to know—and that part digs in _claws._ His own claws curl against the metal table, pressing painfully against the sudden urge to discover if he can still clench them into sheer metal, the intensity nearly overwhelming reason. An _exhale..._ and only under the full force of his will do they loosen.  
  
The void in his mind swallows her words, but the tones themselves remain—quiet, familiar, the shifting cadence of thoughts in motion. That stable pillar of sound he clings to, nothing else able to matter so much.  
  
He ought to listen—to _understand._  
  
_Turn your mind to this, Zarkon._  
  
But the words slip away.  
  
_Focus._  
  
He sharpens his thoughts, clinging to her voice. Weakened though he may be, bone and muscle and even quintessence are no masters of him. When he endures and thrives it will be by his doing alone.  
  
...And by hers.  
  
Now it slots into place, the weight of what lies before him. The suit appears to the unenlightened as a mere piece of ineffective armor, but its true purpose, its _meaning,_ is so much more. ( _Her eyes on him grow keen and sharp, but her explanation continues unbroken. Does she recognize that he now_ understands?)  
  
With this, she gives him not only a suit to wear, nor the simple genius of a mobile life support system. Instead, the gift she places in his hands, on his body, will be _movement._ It will be _sufficiency._ It will be the means to again occupy a throne and not a sickbed, the power to take back an empire from the brink of disasters she still will not fully name.  
  
The glow of her eyes, watchful in the dim, holds on him as though it knows something he cannot fathom. What is it? The understanding hovers just beyond his grasp.  
  
A tilt of his head, a flick of his ears, and he wonders: For all the miserable pith that runs rife in it, what subtle change would he bring to those eyes if he gave voice to what else her gift offers? _Hope_ —a stirring of it faint but so broad it settles something in his chest, quiets the turning of his mind. The weakness of admitting that fear once gripped him turns his tongue to lead, but something else is what truly stays his words. That would be the look in her eyes, the simple presence of his friend ( _his wife_ ) at his side, the strangely soft tones with which she explains the boon she prepares to grant him.  
  
Let nothing disturb this sliver of peace in him, not until she slips from the room later, leaving him to silence and the glow of quintessence against the dark—not until then.  
  
His ears flex, shifting to wrap around the sounds of her voice, and his own words stay hidden beneath that calm. When she finishes her explanation, the miasma of his ever-present exhaustion has nearly drawn him under, but he still clings to awareness. She murmurs a farewell, that she will leave him to his rest, and again she is gone.  
  
He falls asleep trying to hold the sound of her voice in his mind, and though thoughts and fears and memories soon begin to roar, he very nearly manages it.  


* * *

  
  
In the time it takes to manufacture the suit, he teaches himself how to stand. His limbs must only remember the process, but memory is a fickle thing; they know the motions but must learn again how to bear weight.  
  
Patiently, he rebuilds what was lost. He may dig his claws into his palms until Haggar insists he cover them with gauntlets, but not once did he expect the task to be quick or easy. Under her guidance, ensuring no harm will befall him should he slip or jar loose the conduits supplying his quintessence, he attempts it again. And again.  
  
By the time the prototype suit is prepared, he can rise to meet it.  
  
Haggar comes with her druids—( _and he only accepted their presence out of necessity, stifling the crawling distaste that any other would see him so vulnerable_ ). Between a pair of them floats a sealed container, and at no ( _audible_ ) command, they step aside and begin removing what must be dozens of separate components. Over Haggar's shoulder, he sees one turn to another as if consulting. They still do not speak.  
  
Two other druids drift over to help him rise. Ears pinned so far back they ache, he has no shame that he _growls._ But the druids know not to ply their aid unless he _truly_ needs it. ( _He would sooner fall than allow it, but pride accomplishes nothing._ )  
  
Mere paces away, Haggar's brows are drawn, her shoulders tense, and her unease is at a disconnect until he realizes that if this process fails, if her _safeguards_ fail—if he is to die—it will be here.  
  
He straightens his spine, wills himself not stagger and fall, and stares death in its eyes. It will not be the master of him. He survived it far too often to let it steal his resolve.  
  
Haggar moves to his back, locking a metal apparatus into place over his shoulders, its weight negligible but the feel of it a crawling unfamiliarity. With a brief command to her attending druids, she draws back and lets them begin the armor's assembly. They raise their hands, mere shifts of their fingers guiding the components to stir from where they lay and slide through the air, drawn to him as if by magnetism, slotting firmly into place as determined by some unfathomable principles of magic and design. Light though they are ( _to him especially_ ), each impact strikes like a small shockwave. He grits his teeth and _stands._  
  
One impact too many finally steals his breath.  
  
No—it is not the force. Something else, something heavier, more insidious—the feel of being enclosed, of something physical rising and encircling him like a wall. Awareness of the chamber fades with each piece layered on, open air and distance replaced by thick metal and silence. And within it... _nothing._ The emptiness _crawls._ At first, he cannot breathe, cannot think, his heart frozen in place, but perhaps he should have known better. Expected this, even. Should have imagined.  
  
He may wear armor like a second skin, but this is no armor—it is a _shell._ A cage for his wayward quintessence. Thicker, heavier, _all-encompassing—_  
  
( _No air, no sound, no sensation pierces through the metal barrier. His hands curl over nothingness; the void of space may as well surround him._ )  
  
The final piece slots over his face, blocking all light, and for a single, spinning tick, he is certain he will die— _again._  
  
The moment is more than a tick—so much more.  
  
Stillness settles into his limbs, infusing his entire body, _becoming_ it. His heart stops... or perhaps it still beats, but each pulse is feeble, so weak and erratic in a body that should have felt the strength of gods. No air reaches him, none that he can feel. Even as the components of the faceplate click and whir and grant him a filtered, lens-altered sight, a shuddering emptiness opens a gap in him, space where something was meant to be, perhaps the very thoughts from his head.  
  
Only a sense born from millennia lets him know when Haggar leans up to slot something into the suit's back. Two components—she does the same on the left side.  
  
His lungs fill with air as suddenly his body remembers how to _breathe,_ but every inch of his bones, his blood—it _burns._ And then it settles, a second breath coming, rattling in his chest, in his ears, a chaotic echo inside the helm. He almost does not manage a third.  
  
But he does, and then another, and another, and... He has tamed it, or at least brought it to heel enough that his focus shifts to the rest.  
  
Fear is meant to be mastered, and whatever this is counts just the same.  
  
His knees can only lock, a subconscious effort to keep himself upright, but even through the metal he detects the light pressure of the hand at his back, too small and low to be any of the druids, casually offering support with that prodigious strength she so rarely uses. Another tick passes, and her help is no longer needed; he keeps his balance.  
  
His limbs feel enough like _his_ again that they remember how to ache.  
  
And the suit around him, offering support, is untempered power. A device made to match his weaknesses. ( _He breathes, he_ breathes.)  
  
And is it hope. He tries to remember that.  
  
( _He breathes, but it is still a shade too fast._ )  


* * *

  
  
Alone with her in the dark, cold chamber, he grits his teeth against the pain and rises. Guided by magic and shifts of her hands, the metal shell locks into place around him once again, the fluid from the canisters at his back burning as they secure. A deep breath, too sharp in his chest, and he begins, the first tick of long vargas spent reminding distant limbs how to bear weight, how to move, how to regain their once prodigious strength.  
  
Rising to his feet without the armor is a feat of sheer strength and willpower, effortful but _manageable_ at best, yet to try and stand in its hollow, heavy confines leaves his limbs shaking after mere doboshes, his chest tight, an instability born _almost_ from physical strain alone.  
  
When he wakes, Haggar comes, her clockwork schedules adjusting around a body that still must sleep when it wishes. She will have subtly worked over the armor's design during his rests, small changes slipped into the wiring, perhaps entire pieces remade when next he sees it. Somehow she manages this in the midst of her other projects and whatever roles she must assume in order to keep his empire together. ( _He is almost certain she no longer sleeps as often as she should, but she is far too practiced at hiding the signs of it._ )  
  
When she builds movement aids into the armor, the change is obvious. Circumstances may leave him hyper-aware of this shell that has become his lifeline, but how could be hope to miss the moment the suit's pieces slide over him and the first, heavy step he takes is free from the full, jarring, aching weight of before? For the first time, his feet land with the closest they have come to to _certainty_ since this all began.  
  
Finally, he has enough free thought left to contemplate the details of this new armor. Magic lies far beyond his expertise, just as rule and politicking often stray beyond hers, but for millennia he heard and listened to her explanations, learned her methods piecemeal and theoretical, a student left wanting for a science as he studies what she never admits is an art. But this is plain enough: She wove quintessence circuity deep into the metal. Those deceptively simple mechanisms are the staple of all her physical aids, as in her hands, mere lines and crystals can become _anything._  
  
Somehow, the knowledge had escaped him that the medium was capable of this much, of sustenance and augmentation on such a grand scale. This could be one of her greatest works to date.  
  
He tells her this, and her eyes narrow. The praise does not suit her; she turns her gaze away. That familiar, troubled look shapes her face again, some aspect of this either its cause or its stressor, but he does not, _cannot_ understand. Not now, not yet.  
  
He keeps his silence. She will tell him in time. _Always,_ she will.  
  
Each quintant slips by, and the suit tightens its grip around him—( _the confinement of it, the numbness of enclosure, the empty heat of filtered, recycled breath_ )—but like he never learned the luxury of leisure, he presses onward.  
  
This is simple metal over his form—why should it take the shape of a nightmare in his mind? Each tick of discomfort is a _lie,_ he tells himself. A lie. The truth is its form and its function: The plating that shields him like any armor would, the stabilizers that give him the means to move, the power it grants him when the universe thought to take all from him.  
  
But to balance...  
  
( _"Balance of the mind is difficult to quantify," she says. "It has no true axis upon which to measure." She is perched at his bedside when he finally asks, exhaustion unknotting his guarded tongue. What keeps his limbs heavy on the table, his chest struggling to rise, is mirrored in every weighted line of her form, a kinship forged from a shared, bone-deep weariness. His ear flicks, but she says nothing of why psychology suddenly turns her pensive, of why she speaks with a wisdom he cannot fathom._ )  
  
( _"The idea itself may lead one astray. A mind conveys only what it knows. Look away from_ balanced _or_ unbalanced, _sire. They are words to explain too-simple ideas, and true understanding always lies deeper. In theory, balance fills gaps that are missing, finds what went astray. But is that truly what must be done...?" A pause. "I cannot tell you how to do it." Her eyes peer into the darkness, and her shoulders curl. She murmurs, the most honest she has been since he first woke to her eyes above him, "I have yet to learn how."_ )  
  
Even as he stands, true balance remains elusive, yet he learns the suit's patterns and its feels, even as he forgets how to breathe in it.  
  
"Sire?"  
  
He blinks, and his eyes open before he realizes they had fallen closed. With a sharp creak of metal, his fists uncurl. ( _When had he clenched them?_ )  
  
He tries to breathe, but the air does not come. Something edged and electric hums behind the curtain of his thoughts, too familiar to notice. No effort will unlock his legs, and in that moment the only action he imagines he could take—what he would trade the stars for, the _universe_ —is to tear this wretched _cage_ from his body.  
  
But he cannot.  
  
He _cannot._  
  
If he does, he will die.  


* * *

  
  
Maintain, maintain, maintain.  
  
That is what the armor was built for.  
  
Components hidden beneath plates of metal take his wild quintessence and stabilize it; they find the places where cells ache with a need, and they fulfill it. Haggar spent long vargas in her labs devising its fuel source and supplement, a blend of quintessence too powerful for any other... and somehow, even for her.  
  
He catches her rubbing her thumb over the skin of a finger joint, over and again, an unfamiliar habit. This, at least, he is willing to question, and her eyes narrow but she relents within ticks. Shoulders ( _almost_ ) uncoiling, she casts her gaze away and angles the hand out for him to see.  
  
A small patch of shiny, new skin decorates the joint—a scar—and she admits, her voice tempered to calm over the spirals of hate and bitterness he is certain she would rather go unnoticed, "I was careless."  
  
A spill. But quintessence is meant to absorb into her, to slip beneath her skin and become part of her own power...  
  
Somehow, this one burned.  
  
She rubs at it whenever her eyes are narrowed in thought, when she thinks his gaze is elsewhere or refuses to care that it is not. A new sign of agitation to memorize, and he slots it away just like all the rest. Long has he studied her like she studies him, like they are specimens on opposite sides of a glass, somehow both the researcher and subject all at once.  
  
...But there is no glass between them, and there is never meant to be.  
  
More and more often she lurks in his chamber, no excuses offered but no new matters for them discuss, no augmentations to test. If she thinks the change goes unnoticed, she is mistaken. If she thinks he fails to notice when after that, she takes to avoiding him, slipping in and out and staying only as long as she must, then she does not know him as well as she should.  
  
Perhaps she is preoccupied. Thought can wreak strange havoc on any mind, let alone one as great as hers, and she is due her silences, her consternations, her turmoils.  
  
...And if she thinks he is left wanting, wishing for her presence again when she is but a ghost gone in moments, her eyes never meeting his... then she would be accurate. But he doubts she even thought of it.  
  
She returns, though. She always does.  
  
The quintessence remains an odd source of consternation in her, a rival, but not one she may ever defeat. Her voice turns bitter and low whenever she must speak of it, but regardless, in that ( _worried, fearful_ ) watchful, insistent, thorough way he so adores, she tells him with blank certainty that he will die if the canisters on the suit's back are disrupted.  
  
"An obvious weak point," he mutters when he feels well enough for debating the armor's merits.  
  
"Do not provide a shot at it," she offers back ( _so obviously caging the frenetic part of herself that rages against never finding a better solution than this_ ).  
  
Sound advice, but has anyone ever _intended_ to allow access to a weak point? The thought slides into others—of how many will look upon their emperor and see that there now exists a weakness? A _target?_ He would destroy his own universe thrice over and rule it with fear before he lets any think him less than he was before.  
  
Those thoughts fall into the same abyss as the rest when he locks them away, quelling them until later, or never, and a deep, ironic longing stirs for the phoebs in which the effort of walking took too much from him to leave room for such idle musings.  
  
Quintant after quintant vanishes to that simple task— _walking_ —but soon enough, it finds its way back into his repertoire. What does it matter that the steps he counts are far too few, that he must sit and rest and give his chest time to stop aching like a collapsing star, his senses raging and dulling and guttering in the hollow confines of the armor?  
  
No matter if she craves his company or seeks to avoid it, Haggar stays by his side as he moves, _always,_ hovering like some watchful specter, so much more lurking behind her eyes than he could ever hope to name. She gives the impression that her quicker pace, her deceptively _easy_ steps are natural to pare down to match his—no stumbling, no shuffling to keep herself slowed. She turns back when she finds herself ahead of him, fixing him with him a scrutiny the intensity of which burns in her eyes yet slides off him like water.  
  
They rarely speak—only when he is capable of sparing the effort—but there and again, like he has earned it by virtue of simply not dying, she mentions matters of what can only be called _"business."_  
  
Rebels. Insurgents. Traitors. The prince whose very name sets a growl in his throat.  
  
Ruin. Collapse—his empire may crumble without him to guide it, but _he_ cannot collapse, not if he means to take his throne again. Like when he dangles daring, gleaming incentives before the rare proteges he deigns to train, just to light that spark of fire in their eyes and give them a purpose to attain, he tells himself with grim, almost bitter determination that he may only have the throne when he manages to walk to it. All the way.  
  
It seems as good a measure of his health as any, of his ability to carry on as before.  
  
( _He is his own protege now._ )  
  
( _And if he can never make that journey...? No—he_ will.)  
  
The room becomes a cage, familiar and stifling all at once as he circles its edges until his bones ache, until his muscles shiver. Then he sits, and Haggar stands over him, the light in her eyes dulled from the sharp, watchful gaze of before, gentler by visible degrees in the stillness while he recovers from recovering. He would only call that look pity if he wanted to pity himself. The _true_ pity is that he _does_ want to see her bared teeth and narrowed eyes if he dares suggest that too-soft, uncharacteristic sentiment of her—like he _wants_ pain, wants fire, something to take the numbness in him and root it out.  
  
But that is useless.  
  
Through the suit, the wall is a nonentity at his back, impossible to feel as anything but the force which props him upright where he slumped this evening, too worn, too impatient, too _unwilling_ to wait for a chair. He closes his eyes and the disconnect deepens, a noiseless rattling in his skull. Within the armor, he would swear his eyes had already closed, that the faceplate's filters saw for him, even if logic and Haggar's designs tell him it was his own eyes processing the visual input.  
  
A pause, an empty tick while he remembers where his own head ends and the void begins. "I will never be free of this suit, will I, Haggar?"  
  
His eyes slit open; he tilts the helm up and gazes into the too-wide chasm where words are not, but everything about her is _wrong_ through the lenses of his faceplate.  
  
(Wrong, _subtle wrongs, creeping and growing—but one cannot stop what one cannot see._ )  
  
( _That is a memory, and the memory_ hurts.)  
  
Her eyes finds his—( _or whatever she sees of it in the faceplate_ )—and the look in them is one she could never have hoped to hide. "A great deal of progress remains possible, sire."  
  
So he will not be.  
  
Very well.  
  
( _He wants to,_ needs _to tear it from him, needs to be free, to_ breathe. _His heart flutters in his chest, weak like a newborn kit struggling for breath, and he never—he never..._ )  
  
When he stands again, he moves as though it is his only purpose, forcing his legs to follow the patterns he taught himself, one after the other, like a sequence, like a code, like Haggar wrote a process that told the universe how to function and gave it to him. She studied _him_ —his body, his nature, his quintessence—for so long that he trusts her more than any to tell him how to put his pieces back together.  
  
So he walks, just as she bade him to. If he is to adapt, he must do it _well_ —and he must find that place of balance soon. He must regain his throne before his wayward child leaves him nothing left to rule.  
  
( _The armor at his back... quintessence in his veins..._ )  
  
If he is to adapt, he must _survive._  


* * *

  
  
Heart thrumming against his side, breath coming in short gasps, his first thought is that he knows this sensation, his body failing, trickling down to nothing, burning away— _dying._ He died once ( _twice_ ) before. But then sleep falls away in pieces, and the sensation takes off its mask to become a memory again. Time swims around him, ghosts dipping into his veins and twisting beneath his ribs, but it was only a dream.  
  
Only a dream, as if dreams are not all that remains in this universe that can still best him...  
  
Just as always, just as before, he thinks, _Calm. Calm,_ like it will conjure quietude from motes of air, like he can control himself as though he is his own empire, with nothing but a word.  
  
_Maintain._  
  
But that is not right, either.  
  
And then it fades, that storm, that fury with no feeling, just enough that breath finally rattles his lungs, cool and fresh but still not enough to actually _think._  
  
At least, he may sleep ( _or not sleep_ ) in open air, so long as the quintessence feeds at his chest go undisturbed. The inside of his own quarters is but a distant, aching memory now; phoebs have gone by since last he saw them, and had he known then, had he even an _inkling..._ perhaps he would have found more a fraction more comfort in his home of ten millennia than he had.  
  
Haggar has promises: He will see them again soon. She works, she plans—she always does—but until then, all that awaits him is this vast, darkened chamber when he wakes, starless shadows and bright conduits around him, the corners of his vision filled with his ghosts' very own ghosts, old memories long forgotten yet somehow repurposed into new fears.  
  
He is not fool enough to think familiar surroundings would lessen the dreams' string, but somehow he _is_ just fool enough to crave them regardless, a quiet, private, selfishly personal longing he permits himself only when he is alone, when all that lies before him are thoughts and fears to ignore.  
  
The dreams are not new, only redoubled now; long ago he learned to tame them, to break them down and master them... or so he thought. They return, sharper and louder and wilder than before, choking around his neck like a vice, like a pain, like the weight of a suit of armor.  
  
He cannot breathe—but that is common now. At least what little air he does pull in is cool, crisp, not warm, not processed.  
  
Lying on his back in the deserted chamber, his eyes trace the steady glow of the conduits that sustain him. He waits. For what? He is not certain.  
  
For the morning, perhaps—when Haggar comes. She brings the suit, and with it, she brings action, _purpose._ He must master it. ( _He must, he must, he must..._ )  
  
Ticks and doboshes slip by like they scarcely exist, like he is once again trapped in the timeless state from when he first woke, when consciousness was thin and fleeting, vargas gone in a single blink. But now he keeps his awareness about him, counting time by how it wears at his mind, and his chest soon slows its frantic rise and fall, even if he cannot make his shoulders uncoil.  
  
He falls asleep again.  
  
Anything resembling thought blanks out the second time he wakes, his heart beating a violent rhythm against in his side. The second times are worse—they are _always_ worse, which is why he never _intends_ to fall back asleep, but sometimes he cannot fight the pull of his own mind. When the scraps of this dream finally fall from him and release his thoughts, the silence around him is too powerful, too loud, like it has some greater weight than that of his own pulse racing in his ears.  
  
A part of him, still half-asleep, still wonders why the alarms on Haggar's machines have not yet heralded his death, but it is a foolish thought—this is not the feeling of _dying._  
  
This is _living._  
  
An odd, almost laughable longing for a certain suit of armor crawls through him, as though that which swallows all other sensation could somehow erase this.  
  
_Go on,_ he thinks.  
  
_Make me empty._  
  
_Take what is left. Put fear in its place, like I never learned to_ master it.  
  
The tension fades again, because it always does. His breathing quiets, his heartbeat slows. Again, his eyelids droop like heavy weights, but this time he forces them open, again and again. This is _his_ silence, _his_ peace, hard-won from the grips of his own _self_ , and he will keep it.  
  
He waits.  
  
( _He maintains it_.)  
  
Soon enough, morning comes. It always does.  


* * *

  
  
Haggar pares down the suit, streamlines it, turns it efficient, turns it deadly.  
  
"Will this be capable in a fight?" he asks when at last the mere act of _moving_ seems reasonable.  
  
Only the barest pause this time. "It will likely be possible—given time."  
  
That is good enough—a hope, if nothing else. Lifting his hands, he studies them through the faceplate, trying to imagine their old strength returned to them. He tries to forget the metallic, artificial sound of his voice in the suit, the way it echoes through his skull like the chorus of a nightmare. He almost manages it.  
  
"You have done well, Haggar," he says, because it is true.  
  
She does not look away this time, or at least not so readily.  
  
"I have done the best I can," she says.  
  
The words are honest, no hint of turmoil—though her manner closes off again mere doboshes later... but he could have predicted that.  
  
Regardless, as he lowers his hands and lets his shoulders slowly uncoil, this small moment, at least, feels something like equilibrium.  


* * *

  
  
( _He wants her to come closer, but she will not._  
  
_Another night, like so many nights before. He wakes with her at his bedside, a silhouette near the edge of the dais, her dimmed gaze barren and behind that, aching. Her fists are curled and shifting at her sides, the only movement in a frozen form. Her eyes are narrowed, and the_ look _in them—_  
  
_He cannot hold this back any longer._  
  
_"What weighs on you, Haggar?"_  
  
_Her face shifts, ghosts behind it, and he never knew she had ghosts to bear._ (He does, but never her.) _Her mouth a thin line, she keeps her silence, but she steps forward, no hesitation now that something makes her determined._  
  
_Perhaps he would have risen to one elbow to watch if he could, but trust runs easy through him, his vulnerabilities their secret to share_ (and his limbs shake too much, threaded through with damaged cores. He pushed himself too hard, too long, in the vargas before, too eager to _progress_ from this state).  
  
_She draws as close as she can, her knees brushing the side of the table, and he manages just a small shift of an arm—because that much, at least, is possible._  
  
_It is an invitation, but nowhere in his mind had he expected her to take it like a lifeline._  
  
_She rises onto the table beside him, grown bold enough to do so when once she feared even glancing too carelessly at his quintessence conduits, as if they,_ he, _were entirely that fragile. Now she curls beside him, certain she cannot jar them. Her slight form tucks itself against his side, and if only he could_ feel _it, but he wears metal and cold underplating now, all the better for the conduits._  
  
_He imagines she is warm._  
  
_With a bare hand, he finds where robes drape against skin—and she_ is.  
  
What weighs on you? _he does not ask again._  
  
_If she has not told him yet, why would a night of vulnerability change that? She may keep her secrets,_ will _keep them, as long as she wishes..._  
  
_She shifts closer, and he would curl his arm properly around her if he could, if she would allow it, if... if... if..._  
  
If _is a strange word, a_ dangerous _one... but they have never needed words._  
  
_She stays curled against his side, her breathing slow and deep enough that it calms him, and though he never feels her form find the true peace of sleep, she stays silent until the morning._ )  


* * *

  
  
_Maintain, maintain, maintain._  
  
The principle of homeostasis as Haggar explains it to him. She speaks of it in regards to quintessence, as that is his life now—his death as well, looming over them, what once preserved him now seeking to become his undoing.  
  
"You are suffering from an imbalance," she explains, as if that single word can contain all that the past phoebs have wrought. "It may yet be corrected."  
  
She does not lie, does not offer him the curse of false hope. For vargas untold, she labored in her labs to make it the truth—( _and she would forego rest entirely, perhaps, if she did not now spend almost every night curled at his side_ ).  
  
Her work never once ceased. In his own way, his persisted as well—they were seeking his recovery, the both of them. And though their empire lies in ruin the scope of which it has never before seen, when they turn their attention to it, _it_ will recover as well—he will make certain of it.  
  
(Recover— _build stronger than before, if not entirely the same. This brings an opportunity for new change, like scars healing over a wound... and he has so many more scars now,_ burns, _parts of him that were seared away. When he saw his body in a mirror, he no longer recognized it, a map of skin and scar tissue millennia old rewritten in a single battle_.)  
  
Maintain, maintain, maintain. Stifle fear, conquer threats, ensure balance. The principle of homeostasis—a natural tending toward equilibrium, toward _survival._  
  
He _lives._  
  
Time slips away, quintants passing until he is more than capable of walking great distances, of standing however long he wishes.  
  
Some days.  
  
Some days, his limbs will not move, will not bear his weight nor suffer to respond, and those are the days, he imagines, when his throne will slip out of reach again.  
  
But he is capable of adapting, skilled at _surviving,_ simply because he has done so for millennia. Strength is earned through survival, and by that measure, he is the strongest. He may look at his hands and wonder if they could still crush the throats of any who disagree, but no doubt remains.  
  
His strength is beyond question.  
  
He is Emperor Zarkon.  
  
The title finally fits again when he takes back his throne.  
  
With the view of the stars around him, the armor becomes so much _more,_ heightened to extremes in a world of light and movement and the stares of his commanders. Its cage tightens, darkens, closes around his chest, but what was once a sliver of gleaming hope blooms into the reality that it is _function._ With this, he is capable of doing what must be done, and with that knowledge he pushes back all else. He stares out from the glowing lenses of his faceplate, and he _commands,_ for all his voice is still wrong, his breath too thin, balance a foreign concept to a body that must rely on the suit's internal stabilizers...  
  
There is... lasting damage here. He can no longer deny that, but the scope of the work that lies before him leaves him little time to want to.  
  
His throne is his again, his ( _and hers_ ) alone, and his forces leap at his command. With hands still nimble once they remember how to move, he reaches out and slowly, piece by jagged, painstaking piece, slots back together the crumbling shards of his empire.  
  
His child was _not ready_ for rule—and likely never will be. ( _He should have known, she should have known..._ )  
  
( _Their child is a failure in that regard, but there is no time to dwell._ )  
  
By day, he is the emperor he once was. At night, drained again, he lies in his own quarters, once more reliant on conduits of quintessence to keep him alive, but that inconvenience pales when open air and familiar shapes surround him while he sleeps.  
  
( _Every night, without fail, Haggar curls against him. She never speaks, but she is warm, and at times she even drifts off, tucked securely between his arm and his side. The rare peace about her is such that he fights off his own exhaustion just to witness it, the universal constant that it is, a memory repeating across ten thousand decaphoebs_ (and more), _a comfort he had not known he craved._ )  
  
Soon comes a night when his body does not push him to rest, not until the next. His old strength returns, and Haggar very nearly smiles.  
  
Once again, ( _almost_ ) like before, she opens herself to him. They return to an equilibrium.  
  
He missed her.  
  
She was here all this time, yet somehow he still missed her.  
  
When she comes to him in his throne room, she brings word of what transpires beyond. She speaks of rebellions, of supply failures, of attacks by enemy forces succeeding time and again. Yet she also brings news of victories, of plans in the making, of weapons and opportunities.  
  
So much damage has been wrought. The depths of what must be repaired stretch into the centuries in his estimations... yet as always, they will do what must be done.  
  
( _They are skilled at surviving._ )  
  
Once, when she rises from the floor where she knelt—( _that odd, new overformality falling away_ )—she draws close.  
  
Little surprises him now, but something in her manner has him going still, watchful. When she stops directly before him, her hands reach for the hidden catches at the faceplate's edges, and she pauses, waiting for permission; in stillness, he grants it.  
  
( _His quintessence has stabilized enough that he may remove the faceplate for brief moments. That, at least, has been deemed unlikely to kill him._ )  
  
She unfastens it, guiding the mechanisms up and out of the way, and raw, unfiltered light burns his eyes. They narrow, even as the _realness_ of it, of the air on his face, thrills through his veins.  
  
"Sire."  
  
She leans closer, and he bends his head on instinct, letting her press her forehead to his. A breath shudders slowly through him—she is _warm._ Her hands rise to his face, and they too are small points of heat where they find bare skin to touch and not mere metal.  
  
"Sire," she murmurs again, and the air is heavy with the words she will not say, not yet... but someday she will. He will wait, as long as she needs.  
  
In the long, quiet ticks of silence, she reaches in and draws some raw edge out of him with her presence, with her very being alone, and leaves calm, cool stillness in its wake. He manages to forget fear, frustration, futility—forgets the weight of the suit over his body and the utter void beyond it. His breaths come slower, slower, in an odd, almost-rhythm with her own, and his ears fan out, tapping as they run into the sides of the casing.  
  
His claws, still too thick and awkward in these bulky gauntlets, come to rest over her thin waist, and she allows it.  
  
"What if," she murmurs, "we had nothing else? No moment in time but this one?"  
  
A slow rumble works free from his throat, not quite the rattle it would have been if the faceplate was on.  
  
"Then that would be enough," he says.  
  
She leans just a fraction closer, something unknotting in her, an age-old tension falling away. The feeling is familiar—like she can _breathe_ again, just as he suddenly remembered how. With their breath mingling together, warm, he says nothing more, nor does she, because nothing remains to be said. There is no need, not so long as she does not pull away.  
  
Here is some elusive, bone-deep stillness of being, a stability he had not known to yearn for, not yet understood that he craved. Rebels still wage war in his galaxies. The universe twists and changes around him. There is work to be done, and there always will be, but this...  
  
This is an anchor, an equilibrium, and right now, it is enough to simply maintain it.


End file.
